More Monckton invention: what Myles Allen didn’t say

by Gareth on April 11, 2013

Poor old Chris. The discount Viscount has not been having a happy time with the New Zealand press, as my Sciblogs colleague Peter Griffin noted in Monckton’s nightmare week in New Zealand last week. According to the Waikato TImes, he may even be about to hang up his sceptic spurs1. He was given a much more gentle ride by the SunLive news web site in Tauranga, who were pleased to give him a chance to continue to misrepresent and misdirect in a video interview posted yesterday. As ever, I watched it so you wouldn’t have to…

Interestingly, Dr Myles Allen from Oxford University, who’s been right in the tank for the extremist presentations of how much [warming] we might see, he’s been saying, ooh, we’re going to get 5ºC of warming for sure. He came out just last week and said – no, that can’t be right, with 17 – 23 years without any global warming at all then we’re looking more at perhaps a maximum of 2ºC warming over this century, and that, frankly, is not enough to do any particular damage.

Two degrees “not enough to do any particular damage” is (of course) complete nonsense, but it is the words the potty peer puts in Myles Allen’s mouth that are the flat out inventions. Monckton is probably referring to a piece of David Rose tosh in the Daily Mail that so grievously misrepresented Allen’s views that he took the time to pen a reply for The Guardian. Here’s what Allen has to say about likely warming this century:

…even if the “climate sensitivity” is as low as 2C, as some lines of evidence now suggest, we would still be looking at 4C plus by the early 22nd century.

The reason is that there is plenty of fossil carbon down there, and we keep finding more: the Japanese have just demonstrated how to mine sub-ocean methane clathrates. And as other carbon pools fill up, an increasing fraction of the carbon we dump in the atmosphere stays there, in effect, forever (unless our grandchildren decide to pump it out again).

In other words, Monckton is badly misrepresenting Allen’s views, and presumably hoping that no-one down here in little old New Zealand will notice. Just like he was hoping that no-one would notice his lies about the Arctic. No doubt the Flat Earth Society will approve of his tactics…

This is what you get if the Moncktonians have their way: A dysfunctional ETFS leading to this: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10877519
More methane belchers and less trees and a further investment into a type of agriculture that is likely not fitting the type of climate we will call then new norm. Where will the summer water come from to water these pastures?
When will have have an ETFS that actually achieves the changes in our short term economic maneuvering necessary to move into the right direction?

Oh this is delightful! At first I thought this was a joke meant to be, well, a joke…. But while that would have added some distraction to the day, it daunts after a brief while that that website is actually for real: The cuckoo’s nest of them all:http://principia-scientific.org/about/why-psi-is-a-private-assoc.html
I wonder if the above listed ‘luminaries’ are actually aware of their names being used on this website? Their ‘Publications’ section is source of much fun…
What a HOOT!

The Aviator

The Aviator is Gareth's latest book -- the first in a series set in The Burning World. Cover artist Dylan Horrocks describes it as: "a light-hearted journey (by state-of-the-art airship) around a world transformed by climate change and subsequent political collapse. Rock God Evangelists, super-rich survivalists, back-to-nature primitivists, heavily armed luddites, goats with the secret of eternal youth, and a horny artificial intelligence with a taste for bluegrass and classic Hollywood films; The Aviator is a Gulliver-esque romp through a future we hope won’t come to pass."